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Alekhine's Defense (1.e4 Nf6)
How do Alekhine's Defense games actually end? Across 30,110 Lichess games that reached the position after 1.e4 Nf6, White won 44.6%, 4.3% were drawn and Black won 51.1%. Below: the main line move by move, the most played continuations (the favorite is 2.e5), the rating effect and the opening's history.
The main line, move by move
| Move | Position name | Games | White | Draws | Black |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.e4 | King's Pawn Game | 1,601,410 | 49.2% | 4.3% | 46.4% |
| 1...Nf6 | Alekhine Defense | 30,110 | 44.6% | 4.3% | 51.1% |
| 2.e5 | - | 16,645 | 46.4% | 4.5% | 49.1% |
| 2...Nd5 | Alekhine Defense: Normal Variation | 15,583 | 45.6% | 4.6% | 49.8% |
| 3.d4 | - | 6,718 | 45.5% | 4.8% | 49.7% |
The 5 most common continuations (for White)
| Move | Variation | Games | White | Draws | Black |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.e5 | - | 16,645 | 46.4% | 4.5% | 49.1% |
| 2.Nc3 | - | 9,379 | 43.8% | 4.2% | 52.0% |
| 2.d3 | - | 2,063 | 41.8% | 4.6% | 53.6% |
| 2.Nf3 | - | 711 | 35.2% | 3.7% | 61.2% |
| 2.Bc4 | - | 406 | 37.2% | 3.4% | 59.4% |
How rating changes the same position
| Rating band (average of the pair) | Games | White | Draws | Black |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1600-1799 | 15,156 | 45.2% | 3.6% | 51.2% |
| 2200-2499 | 655 | 43.2% | 6.7% | 50.1% |
The story of the opening
Alexander Alekhine, the future world champion, introduced 1...Nf6 to the world at the Budapest tournament of 1921, and the defense has carried his name ever since. It is hypermodern provocation in its purest form: the knight offers itself as bait so White's pawns advance, and Black spends the rest of the game trying to prove that the imposing center is actually a row of targets.
The defense's most famous moment also happened in Reykjavik 1972: Bobby Fischer used it twice against Boris Spassky, winning once, a choice so unexpected it became a symbol of that match's unpredictability. In club statistics the Alekhine scores better than its reputation suggests, precisely because few White players study deeply how to sustain the center it invites them to build.
Compare it with every other opening in the opening statistics archive, or visit its neighbors: Scotch Game and King's Gambit. Nerd aside: chess notation is a 64 square code, cousin to the ones living next door, like binary and Morse.
Source: the Lichess open game database (database.lichess.org, CC0 data), months 2014-06, 2015-01, 2016-01, snapshot of 2026-07-09: blitz, rapid and classical games with the players' average rating between 1600 and 2199, aggregated by move sequence. Variation names and ECO codes: lichess-org/chess-openings (CC0).
Last updated: · Methodology and sources